Electrical equipment is often connected to individual wires having conductive cores sheathed in insulation by means of connections in which the cores of conductors to be connected are clamped between pairs of conductive parts by a screw device or by a spring mechanism. For the manufacturer, such connections suffer from the drawback of requiring several different components in order to provide a single connection, thereby requiring assembly operations which should be avoided as much as possible in order to reduce manufacturing costs, (e.g. assembling and screwing in screws for screw connections, or compressing springs prior to assembly for spring mechanisms, both of which operations are relatively difficult and are consequently potential sources of trouble).
Such connectors also suffer from the drawback for the user of requiring the ends of the wires to be stripped prior to connection therewith. It is common practice when making low-current electrical connections to use wire-stripping connectors which include a slotted metal connector part in which the edges of the slot are suitable for clamping against the core of an insulated electric wire once the wire has been inserted into the open end of the slot, with the sides of the slot cutting through the insulation while leaving the metal core practically undamaged.
Such wire-stripping connectors are suitable for making connections by means of special insertion tooling, e.g. by means of a machine in a factory, and this is conventional for multi-point connectors used in telecommunications, or for connectors whose shape and size are such as to enable wires to be connected with conventional tools such as a pair of pliers, as is the case with miniature connectors for use with telephone wires.
However, wire-stripping connectors for high current electrical apparatus, e.g. for junction blocks, cam switches, or relay switches, are not generally satisfactory when the connections are to be made on the housings containing said electrical apparatuses and when taking account of the constraints placed on said housings.
Because of the larger size of the wires, the insertion force must be increased relative to the above-mentioned low-current applications, and means are therefore required for amplifying the insertion force, which means often complicate the apparatus with which they are associated and generally also increase its bulk and make it more expensive.
In addition, the positions of connections on such housings, and the sizes of such housings, may vary widely depending on the specific applications, thereby making the solutions suggested above inapplicable. It thus appears that there is a need for a connector which mitigates the above drawbacks, which reduces the costs of manufacturing and assembling an installation, which are of reduced bulk, and which are easily adapted to different housings.